Meg shook her head so vigorously that it set the ribbons on her white cap bobbing. "It's no dream. You'll have to talk to the baron and tell him something-something that won't vex him, and something he'll believe."

"Well, that certainly eliminates the truth," Sheridan said bitterly. "I mean, he's bound to be just a trifle miffed if I tell him I've managed to misplace his fiancee somewhere along the English coastline. The truth is I lost her!"

"You didn't lose her, she eloped! Miss Charise ran off with Mr. Morrison when we stopped in the last port."

"Regardless of that, what matters is that she was entrusted to my care, and I failed in my duty to her father and to the baron. There's nothing to do but go out there and tell the baron that."

"You mustn't!" Meg cried. "He'll have us thrown straight into a dungeon! Besides, you have to make him feel kindly toward us because we have no one else to turn to, nowhere to go. Miss Charise took all the money with her, and there isn't a shilling to buy passage home."

"I'll find some sort of work." Despite her confident words, Sherry's voice trembled with strain, and she looked about the tiny cabin, unconsciously longing for somewhere to hide.

"You don't have any references," Meg argued, her voice filling with tears. "And we don't have anywhere to sleep tonight and no money for lodgings. We're going to land in the gutter. Or worse!"

"What could be worse?" Sheridan said, but when Meg opened her mouth to answer, Sherry held up a hand and said with a trace of her normal humor and spirit, "No, don't, I beg you. Don't even consider 'white slavery.' "

Meg paled and her mouth fell open, her voice dropping to a dazed whisper. "White… slavery."

"Meg! For heaven's sake, I meant it as a… a joke. A tasteless joke."